


those who love caesar and hate tyranny

by ballantine



Category: Ancient History RPF, Rome (TV 2005)
Genre: Choking, Drunk Sex, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hate Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-22 09:15:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22980442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: After the funeral, a creature of spite avails himself of an honorable man.
Relationships: Mark Antony/Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39





	those who love caesar and hate tyranny

It was a few days after the funeral that Brutus disguised himself as a common tradesman and escaped the house. He told no one he was going. He took no guard.

What was he trying to prove, what made him leave the relative safety of his home and venture out into a city raging for his blood? Denial, perhaps. A refusal to accept that his lot could have taken such a turn – except his hands were on the reigns; it was he who guided the horse. (Maybe this is why, when it all turned to cack, part of him wasn't surprised in the slightest.)

He knew he could not bear another moment of sitting uselessly by while Cassius paced. His friend spoke endlessly of salvaging the situation, seemingly unaware of his own pallor, the rapidity of his speech, or the way his hands shook. Cassius always possessed a confidence and surety of vision he lacked, and it stung now to see him so changed. It made the very ground Brutus walked on feel unstable.

It was late as he walked through the streets, and the people passing did not linger or look long at one another. Signs of civil disturbance cropped up around corners in the form of overturned carts, broken furniture. Occasionally: a prostrate body. The rioters had not been very discriminating.

This was what Caesar had wrought, he reminded himself.

Brutus could still feel the heat of the funeral pyre on his face. He imagined he could smell it on the street. _Do you mourn?_ asked the ash drifting on the night air. _Or do you rage?_ So many claimed to do the one while really doing the other. Opportunists of the worst kind.

His mother was angered by their reversal of fortune – but also oddly accepting. Where Caesar's funeral had stoked the flames of the city's fury, it tempered hers. It was difficult not to feel like he had been bartered away somehow, proscribed in exchange for her vengeance. He had this thought and immediately felt ashamed of it.

And there, in the lingering sting of the emotion, was the most simple answer on his motivations that night: shame.

It carried him from the great house of his family like a mighty river sometimes rose and washed away all trifling debris. This flood sent him mixing indiscriminately with all manner of rabble and low curs, the unstable detritus upon which the city had always uneasily sat.

That is to say, he found himself in the company of Mark Antony.

* * *

In the vile screed he called his eulogy, Antony invoked Brutus's honor seven times. By the seventh and final iteration, _Brutus, an honorable man_ had become an ironic anaphoric flourish, one that inspired only outrage and vitriol. This cut as fine as any other blade Antony might have wanted to use on him.

His colleagues never properly appreciated Antony's gift for rhetoric. Cruder than Cicero's, to be sure, but what couldn't turn the ear of the Senate might still inspire lesser men. It was that emotional Asiatic manner of speech he affected; paired with his otherwise coarse manners, it often rang true.

Despite his history of degeneracy and manipulation, everyone could not help but assume Mark Antony was too simple to deceive _them_. It was strange and appalling to realize he'd been out-maneuvered by the vulgar beast. What had he called Brutus's speech after? _A touch too cerebral_ , said with a malevolent sympathy. As if Brutus's unadorned oration was an elitist self-serving lie.

Oh, but this was exactly why Brutus had always loathed politics! The endless debates and lawsuits, the quarrels and plotting. Using language for only its basest purposes; it was no surprise that Antony should have skill in manipulation. He probably needed to employ it every time he wanted to be with a woman. It's likely how he positioned himself in Caesar's good graces to begin with.

* * *

He encountered Antony, appropriately enough, on the far end of a knife blade.

Brutus had found a tavern the likes of which he would never before have stooped to enter – literally, as the entryway was festooned with a ragged filthy half-curtain, causing him to shudder and duck. Once inside, he applied himself most rigorously to choking down some libations. The establishment's house wine was bitter and fortified, no doubt seeking to bludgeon the drinker's better senses until he was in a fit state to order yet more.

Brutus ordered more.

For an hour he was left alone with his cup, and this allowed him to accomplish his vague goal of listening to the conversations dominating the room. He thought if he could get a sense of the mood of the plebeians, he might take steps to somehow address the situation of he and his co-conspirators. Underestimating the populace was where he had misstepped and Antony had triumphed, was it not?

 _Except_ – at home, where the walls had started to block him in, trapping Brutus with the sound of Cassius's pacing and the sight of his mother's placid, ever-patient disappointment, this plan hadn't seemed quite so stupid.

The fight, when it came, flared shockingly quick.

A hairy colossus of a man presumed to recognize him and then doubled down on the insult by mistaking him for Servilius Casca. Brutus made a level, if perhaps indelicate reply. He went to drink more of the swill in his cup, only to have it knocked to the floor by the man, who he then denounced on the spot as a flea-ridden dog. The man pulled a wicked blade.

Brutus found his back to a wall, his vision filled with nothing but his own mistakes – every step that had brought him to this stinking hole and his soon-to-be ignominious end. He shook, but he did not cower. He hoped they would not lie about that, in the tales they told of how he died.

“Hail, Moga. Let the fellow go,” said a voice approaching from the deeper darkness of the room. It was shockingly familiar.

Mark Antony ambled forth like a vision and stood beside the brute, looking at Brutus with lazy indifference. “There, now. See how he quakes? It would be embarrassing if you killed him here. Like beating a child in public.”

Brutus's wet eyes blinked and hardened into a glare, but Antony swung between he and the man Moga and did not notice his fury. Even his body language – baring his back to Brutus, without a thought of danger – was an insult.

“I will deal with him,” Antony said to Moga. “Is that not my right?”

Moga begrudgingly backed off. Brutus saw he clutched a coin in his hand, and also that Antony was tucking away a purse. His outrage grew.

“Spending Caesar's money already, are you?” he sneered, low enough for only the other man to hear.

Antony slowly turned around, and this close Brutus could see where the easy carelessness in his eyes turned brittle at the edges. There was cold dislike underneath. It made him feel oddly better to see it.

“You stupid fuck,” said Antony.

His strong hand came up and roughly grasped Brutus's collar, and he was extracted swiftly from the tavern.

* * *

“Are you going to kill me?” Brutus asked, as he was thrust into a private room five minutes' walk from the tavern.

He looked around; it was fairly unadorned, with only two couches and a simple rug, but at least it appeared clean. He didn't like the idea of his blood mixing with the filth in the tavern. It is better that it happen here, he thought.

“Drunk as you are, I wouldn't get to enjoy it,” said Antony behind him. “When I kill you, your eyes shall be clear.”

He threw off his heavy outer cloak and made a beeline for the amphora along the far wall, ignoring Brutus as thoroughly as if he were a slave.

Brutus looked after him resentfully. The man seemed to take up half the room. He wore his customary short tunic with a belt slung low, all aimed to show off his physique. It was as good a threat as any words he might utter.

Stomach rebelling, Brutus shifted his gaze to the dark wine sliding from the amphora. It likely tasted better than the wretched stuff he'd had thus far that evening. He contemplated requesting a cup. It might settle him.

“Did you imagine you would fool anyone with that disguise, by the way?” Antony inquired, not looking around as helped himself to another cup of wine. “It's pitiful. You smell of rose and almond oil and hold yourself like someone who has never had to wash his own back.”

Liber's bones, but Brutus could not stand the strange airs the man put on, affecting the common soldier.

“Please spare me your man of the people act, I haven't the stomach for it just now,” he said, as scathingly as he could manage while still wavering in place.

He crossed the room and groped like a blind man for the reassuring solidity of the couch. Once he'd lowered himself, he looked around to find Antony studying him with a narrow smile.

“I imagine you haven't the stomach for much of anything just now. You never did.” Antony paused, deliberate and heavy. “Though occasionally you do surprise me.”

Brutus, who had opened his mouth to defend his tolerance, now hesitated, unsure they were still talking of the wine. His aforementioned weak stomach twisted, grief and anxiety curdling within. He looked away and, with effort, smoothed his expression. His face remained hot.

Striving to overtake the feeling, he asked, “Why did you help me? Have you changed your mind, do you seek some form of amnesty?”

This brought a short laugh to the other man's lips.

“But I've just told you – I would dearly love to see you die in a lowly tavern, trampled by plebs. I thought about letting it happen, I really did.” Antony took a seat on the opposite couch and tipped his head back, as if in pleasing reminiscence of a good dream. He mused, “I know a particularly invigorating chap from Gergovia who is gifted in making dice from knuckle bones. I'd let him take the hand that held the knife – which was it, out of curiosity? I believe you favor your right?”

He would not be scared of Antony and his sly smiles and sweetly-spoken threats. The tavern's strong wine was finally doing some good.

He shifted and relaxed back on the couch. Antony must have registered the change in his mood, for his eyes narrowed.

“So why didn't you?” he asked again. “Let this friend of yours take my hand, I mean?”

Antony gestured with his cup. “It was a near thing. But you know – have to think of how it would play with your men of quality. Politics. A whole lot of blathering and waiting, I hate it. Silly way to get things done, really.”

Brutus's mouth twitched with bitter humor. “The waiting's not so bad. I don't mind that. But I find the arguing tedious.”

“Not much arguing with a blade,” reflected Antony. Perhaps he meant to intimidate, but his tone was idle.

“No,” said Brutus. “No, there isn't. I figured that one out myself.”

This neatly killed the nascent conversation, if that was what one might have called it. Antony moodily finished the rest of his cup of wine and fetched another. He brought the amphora with him this time, setting it down on the floor beside his couch.

When he resumed his seat, he was watching Brutus again like he might take the hand after all. “Do you know what I find most unbearable about you, friend Brutus?”

He wasn't going to listen to this empty-handed. Glowering, Brutus reached out and took possession of the wine. Antony let him.

“It's your attitude,” confided Antony. “This miserable, put-upon wounded facade you wear. One would think your old friend had just been betrayed and murdered by a rabble of soft-handed cowards – oh, _wait_ – ”

“You really are a disgrace,” snapped Brutus.

Antony toasted him. “Your opinion on that front is naturally highly sought after these days.”

Lacking a cup and supposing the company would not be scandalized by his poor manners, Brutus held the amphora in both hands and tipped it back. He was right; it tasted much better than the wine from the tavern.

He said, “What you did the other day. Turning a consular funeral into a, a riot, staining the Forum with the sweat and blood of that rabble – ”

Antony evidently found this very funny, for he began to helplessly laugh. He clutched his cup to his chest so it would not spill. “ _That_ is what bothers you most? Your commitment to niceties is to be applauded. You are nothing if not consistent.”

This attitude was not a surprise. He had always treated the Republic like a joke.

Antony would turn matters of the state into a pantomime. A speedy drama dominated by coarse humor, all of the Republic's most esteemed men and their careful work distilled down to heaving bosoms and erect phalli and punctuated with the sort of end inevitable to such premises of the stage.

In his brooding, he did not notice at first that Antony had lapsed back into silence. When he did, a prickle of danger crept into his inebriated confidence. A different type of danger than the mortal peril he has risked thus far that evening. Antony looked – empty. Bleak.

He looked, in short, like how Brutus had felt since the Ides.

He didn't think his ancestor, the great Junius Brutus, ever felt so low when he drove out the despotic Tarquin. It was said Junius possessed a will of tempered steel, and he took no role that was not of his own choosing. Brutus thought the moment that required his will was past; he had done the deed, after all. His character should be proven as solid as Junius's.

So why, then, did he still feel as lost and uncertain as when he first gripped the knife on the Senate floor? The fateful moment was over, impossible to recapture or change, but its ambiguity lingered. He kept expecting to see bloodstains on his hands, which could only be a sign of a guilty conscience. If you are not streaked with the blood of your sacrifice, what is to differentiate the slaying from murder?

He had done what was necessary and right; his friends and family all told him this. But the only face that called out in fellow feeling to his turmoil and sick heart belonged to Mark Antony. He could still see his face in the Senate, looking upon Caesar's body for the first time. When he backed away from the sight, receding into the shadows, it was as if he took something critical of Brutus's with him.

“It is not what bothers me most,” said Brutus.

Antony's eyes refocused on him. Brutus gripped the amphora but did not raise it again. He feared his hands would shake and spill the remaining wine.

He continued, “For the sake of the Republic, I cannot wish it had not happened. But for myself – I wish for little else. Every minute of every hour since it happened.”

Antony hadn't replaced his bland mask. His face was stripped bare and full of only grief. Brutus hardly recognized him.

“I want to kill you,” said Antony quietly. He paused and clarified, “I am going to kill you.”

It was one thing to hear it said by a political opponent. It was another to hear it said by a grieving man.

“I loved him,” he said, unsteadily. He swallowed past the tightness in his throat. “And despite everything else in your character, I know you loved him as well.”

Antony made an aborted sound, a sort of a savage scoff, and all at once Brutus felt his torment and guilt settle into a glorious peace. The relief was enough to make him dizzy, though the wine doubtless played a part in that too. He leaned forward a little, engaged and steadier than he had felt in days.

“Are you laughing,” he said, “because you think love is only reserved for poets and other such men you might despair of, or because you know I'm right and you can't stand it?”

Antony moved fast. His wine cup clattered to the floor and he was upon him before Brutus could flinch up from his couch.

Antony planted a knee across his legs, pinning him down, and his hands gripped the backrest behind his shoulders. The muscles in his bare, sun-darkened thighs were tense with his anger, the heat from his body overwhelming. It was an effective cage in more ways than one. Antony had always known how to use his body to intimidate and bully, to exhort and tempt.

Brutus met his eyes, withstood that familiar cruel smile. He told himself this was a test, that if he made it out of this, he could handle any challenge yet to come.

“Why am I laughing?” Antony's voice was conversational but tipped with poison. “I'm laughing because you might finally have me figured correctly. And because it doesn't make a difference.” He lowered his face until he could speak the words directly into Brutus's ear, a sickening imitation of intimacy. “I did love Caesar. He was the only man worth anything in this rotten place. Without him, there's not much to stop me from burning it all to the ground.” He leaned back and smiled down at him. “If I feel like it.”

“And do you feel like it?” he asked. He refuse to lower his chin or show any sign he minded the disconcerting closeness.

“Frequently.” His eyes journeyed down the length of him and landed upon the amphora he clutched in his lap. Brutus tightened his grip reflexively.

Antony's dark eyes flicked up to meet his, a malicious curiosity seeping in beneath his anger.

He slowly reached out and gripped the neck of the amphora. Resisting the tug was pointless, so Brutus relinquished it and fixed his eyes somewhere past the man's shoulder. He waited to hear the out pour of mockery as the state of his lap was no longer concealed from Antony's notice.

The low chuckle came, but what followed was unexpected.

“Friend Brutus, you finally have a purpose.”

Brow knitting, face flaming, Brutus looked at him. He jumped slightly as Antony reached out and clasped his cock, which had risen hot and eager under his tunic as soon as the other man had pinned him.

“Do you mean to geld me?” he demanded. He swore to himself he would fight back if it came to that. He would not die in such a state.

“What use would you be then?” Antony asked, honestly puzzled, and unceremoniously swung his other leg over so he was sitting astride Brutus's legs.

Shocked, Brutus put a hand up to his chest, pulling at the cloth in a tight grip, unsure whether he wished to push him away or pull him closer. The answer became clear when Antony crushed their lips together.

They were both the worse for wine – had to be, for this to feel appealing, even _natural_ and not like the last flickers of their sanity starting to gutter.

He could not remember the last time he touched someone. It felt like it had been an age. His mother touched his cheek? Or, or Cassius put his hands on his shoulders, perhaps.

That day, Brutus had never touched Caesar except with the point of his blade. And perhaps he should have, in those final moments – clasped his face or hand, some small moment of recognition of the love that had been between them.

He'd never liked Antony, which somehow made it easier to be present with him then. He dragged him closer and opened his mouth, welcoming the swipe of his wine-rich tongue. He made a low keening noise, humiliatingly desperate.

Antony pulled away, and Brutus made another mindless sound of protest. His hand reached out, for now it was sure of its desires, but Antony evaded his grasp by leaning back. He was flushed and breathing hard, and his hair was tousled from Brutus's other grasping hand.

A mean sort of satisfaction crossed his face as he observed Brutus in a similar state.

Without a word, he bent fluidly at his waist and retrieved from the floor the amphora of wine, which he pressed back into Brutus's hands.

“Drink up, there's a good chap,” he said.

Confused, Brutus did as he was bid, though he angled the jug to watch as the other man rose up on his knees. Antony spit on his fingers and reached behind and beneath the drape of his tunic. Brutus's eyes widened and he nearly choked on the wine.

Either Antony was impatient or he required little in the way of readying; it felt like only seconds had passed when he dropped his hand and stole the amphora back from Brutus. He tipped it perfectly vertical, finishing it off. Brutus watched the eager gulping action of his sleek neck and unconsciously reached down to squeeze himself.

Antony tossed the amphora to the side; it landed somewhere and shattered but neither of them looked after it, for then he was throwing all fabric aside and lowering himself onto Brutus's aching cock.

“Is this why you wear your tunics so short?” Brutus asked, breathless. He tried to thrust up, but Antony had him pressed inescapably into the couch; he could do little more than twitch his hips. “Makes for easy access. Long draping fabric can interfere in the passion of the moment, I suppose.”

“Don't talk,” said Antony between gritted teeth. He seated himself fully, and they both groaned.

He fucked down on him with all the vigor of a man who'd been riding a war horse for the better part of a decade. Long smooth movements at a punishing pace, a grim set to his mouth.

Between the drink and the fucking, Brutus did not think to stop his thoughts from progressing out into the world. “Did he used to take you like this?”

Antony shoved him roughly back against the seat rest, hard enough to knock the wind from his chest. “Who's taking whom, you wretched little whelp?” But he didn't stop moving; if anything, his speed increased, his knees clamping tighter around Brutus's hips.

His hands fumbled along the sweat-slick muscles of Antony's thighs, trying to gain purchase. His abuse continued to pour out as the sensations built and overwhelmed him.

“Do you miss it?” He asked, relentless, almost pleading. He didn't which of them he was trying to needle. “Are you thinking of him now – is that why you're doing this?”

Antony put a hand over his neck, and Brutus's words cut off with a choking gasp.

“Even if I was, at least I'd have a reason,” Antony said. His face twisted, vicious. “What's yours?”

His hand bore down with the same inexorable promise as his fucking, and he squeezed until nothing could get past the gates of his fingers, not insults nor begging. not even breath.

It was in such a besieged state – unable to talk, pressure mounting – that Brutus wanted to confess it all. Through watering eyes, he watched the contempt on Antony's face and it felt perversely like salvation. At last, a mirror that reflected his truth. Pleasure pooled at the base of his cock, his vision grew dim, and he was at last worthy.

There were worse ways to feel, just before death.

Then Antony's fingers loosened and air flooded his lungs in a glorious rush, cleaning out the phlegmatic grief. His vision went white and he came, collapsing back limply against the couch.

He wasn't quite sensate as Antony brusquely finished himself off, taking care to lean forward to soil Brutus's garb.

He winced as the other man dismounted; his throat ached, his cock ached, his body was heavy with the letdown of pleasure and drink.

Brutus gulped in air and turned his head, trying to watch the other man's unsteady, staggering progress across the room. He thought Antony was heading for a washcloth and basin, but instead he located a second amphora somewhere. He carried it back to the other couch and then cast himself down, his well-muscled legs sprawled carelessly wide.

Brutus thought of his seed leaking from between those legs, and his cock might have twitched were it not already vanquished.

He had never much liked looking at Antony. He was a sleek animal, dangerous and unsettling with his easy physicality and soldierly manners. But after the Ides, Brutus saw him differently: more clearly, in some ways, though he found his own judgment hard to trust these days.

He looked at his expression, blurred by wine, tired and sad, and thought of him again in the Senate, looking upon Caesar's body.

Who was he to be sickened by Brutus? And who was Brutus, that his actions could horrify a man who has slain countless others?

Just then, Brutus noticed his cock was still lying spent against his thigh, visible to the room. He hastily adjusted his tunic.

“Do you even want to govern Rome?” Brutus asked him suddenly. His words came out in a rough croak. “Say – say you get your revenge and kill us. Would that satisfy you? If the Senate kept you in drink and whores, could you be content to let the Republic move on?”

He wasn't offering, but he was curious.

Antony blinked and looked over at him with vague surprise, almost like he had forgotten he wasn't alone. He flashed a sleepy smile, a glimmer of his former malice sparking in his eye. “Is that what you think will happen, if I am out of your way?”

“And why not?”

He shook his head and lifted his hips to adjust his tunic, offering a distracting flash of his own sated manhood. He sighed and relaxed back against the couch.

“I almost despise your naivete more than your disloyalty,” Antony mused and laughed, more tired than bitter. “You great liberators – do you really think Rome will merely shrug and go back to the old ways? Watch: the empire will be carved up like a prize pig. If you want a choice cut, you better move fast.”

It was precisely the sort of low estimation he might have expected from a man who only thought along lines of violence. But instead of feeling helpless or angry, Brutus felt a worn sort of clarity. He and Cassius would go East, he thought, and raise an army.

“It wasn't mere theatrics, the funeral,” said Antony abruptly. “I meant every word I said.”

Brutus thought again of the sea of upturned faces in the Forum and how they'd transformed at Antony's speech. He wondered who was the real author of the hatred he'd seen there: he who wielded the knife or he who described its fateful stroke.

“I know,” said Brutus. His voice was still rough from Antony's treatment. “So did I.”

For a dazzling moment he almost believed himself.


End file.
